Retail 2024: MICHAEL SEVER

Sever, a longtime Hershey employee, was named plant manager of the candymaker’s Stuarts Draft manufacturing facility in 2022. He had previously been site operations leader at the facility, which produces nut-based candies like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Almond Joy. The plant, which opened in 1982, is the second largest of Hershey’s seven manufacturing sites.

Sever’s 20-year career with the Fortune 500 company has taken him to China and included time as a plant manager in Hershey’s Lancaster, Pennsylvania, facility. In 2018, Sever became vice president of U.S. operations for educational travel company WorldStrides and started a small-batch confection company, Wild Blue Chocolate, with his wife, Jessie. He then held management roles at food and beverage companies Danone and Kerry’s locations in Virginia before coming back to Hershey.

Sever managed the plant during a failed attempt by workers at unionization in March 2022. The vote was followed by allegations of retaliation against a union sympathizer, which Hershey settled out of court. The plant’s union organizers intended to hold a new election but decided in January to delay due to doubts about the potential for success.